Are the 40s really the new 30s?

VODCAST - 21 March 2017 Sergei Scherbov at Demography Today

MEDIA

Sergei Scherbov explains new methods of measuring population aging with a number of application examples. The presentation is based on new research from the World Population Program Reassessing Aging from a Population Perspective (Re-Aging) project. It was part of the Lecture Series "Demography today" that is organized at the Spanish National Research Council. Watch the full lecture here.

Abstract

Remeasuring ageing: Are the 40s really the new 30s?

Traditional measures for aging have been in use for many decades. They are widely applied by interested parties from scientists to politicians and are used in many national and international organizations. These measures provide the fundamental inputs into the analysis of population aging and into other related fields. Because they do not take into account changes in people's characteristics such as improvements in life expectancy and health, these measures are becoming increasingly inappropriate for both scientific and policy analysis. In this presentation the characteristics approach to measuring of population aging is introduced. A number of examples of new measures of population aging using characteristics, such as remaining life expectancy, health, normal public pension age, and hand-grip strength are provided. Aging look less rapid applying the characteristics approach, compared with traditional ones. For some regions, almost no aging occurred in the recent past. Supplementing chronological age with measures that take into account the changing characteristics of people allows us to analyze aging more comprehensively and more accurately.